A visit to the Crunchy Con Fambly Garden
Thursday March 27, 2008
Categories: Gardening
In which Your Working Boy takes Boy Matthew's laptop outside and film's a short, humorless clip showing the wee backyard kitchen garden we planted. (And experimented with adding a video element to this blog). I promise future ones will be...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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The video's not available. What the heck happened?
Dunno. I'm trying to figure it out. Sorry, hang on...
Nice garden, Mr. Dreher. All you need now is a charismatic straw hat and a pair of suspenders.
What. No hot dog vine?
Rod,
Your garden looks similar to the "square foot garden" method. Are you satisfied with it? I'm going to try a SFG this year.
Nice! Now all you need is the "Green Acres" theme song running in the background...
:)
Think overalls. No shirt.
It's totally a Square Foot Garden. Can't say how satisfied I am -- we just finished planting today.
I don't know why this video plays sometimes, but doesn't play alla time.
IT'S A TALKING HEAD!
go to Best Buy and purchase an inexpensive digicam with your econ boost payment. we need to see more of the garden. Can't wait to see the birds and critters attack the garden
And you damnsure know they will! I will have to arrange for a cinematographer to tape me muttering vile imprecations against the natural world.
If you want an opportunity to mutter imprecations against nature, you should look outside my window and see the fresh snow.
What a square, judgmental, doctrinaire, fundamentalist garden you have.
Aha, that's better. Nice little garden. I second Erin's "Green Acres" comment. Can Julie do a Hungarian accent?
Re: your peach tree, for many years we had a honeybell orange tree in our backyard that refused to produce fruit. During the hurricanes in 2004, it was uprooted and knocked over. We managed to replant it, and ever since, it's given amazing oranges. Nothing like a homegrown honeybell orange. Maybe it's an old wives tale, but I've heard that a shock to a tree's system will kickstart it. Worked for us.
Video gone again :(
You know, every time I hear your voice, Rod, it sounds very different from how I expected it. Though I can't say how I expected it...
Anyway, best of luck on you all with your gardening, and God bless.
Often thought the same thing, Joey. Heard Rod on NPR once, and now with this video a second time, and on both occasions was very taken aback (in a good way). You have a great speaking voice, Rod, you should do more audio/video on the blog. Often I find myself disappointed when I hear my favorite writers speak, but your voice is a very pleasant divergence from that trend...
Wow, what I find amazing is how far along your plants are this early in the Spring. We won't be able to plant tomatoes, cukes, squash or the herbs until about May 15. This past week, during my son's college break he put in lettuce, radishes, and onions, and spinach. This is about all we can put in this time of year.
Thanks guys. I really don't like my voice, actually. Too nasally pitched.
Nice Garden!
What kind of tomatoes do you grow?
Very nice backyard garden. But I think you said your tomatoes will be climbing the strings? They'll need more support than that. They may need more horizontal space than you have for them there, too. But I dunno; hard to tell just glimpsing the space on the video. Good luck with everything. We're still waiting for the dang snow to stop snowing, and for the last of the 100+ inches of it that we got this winter to melt. Bah.
Pretty.
How about depositing your excess harvest in a "crop derivative" fund for future income?
It seems that current real CASH prices on staple crop commodities confound all economic orthodoxy (future price is a discount of present price) by being LOWER than the one speculators are quoting the farmers for hoarding until TOMORROW - so now we have two currencies, the greenback, and whatever natural commodities your wish to hoard and barter with... !!!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/business/28commodities.html?em&ex=1206849600&en=0ec016a630af0065&ei=5087
I'm a bit disappointed in the voice, Rod. Why have you no southern accent at all? You grew up in LA, and live in TX, and still no southern accent? This is odd, and rather sad. (OK, just kidding.)
Unless those are determinate tomato plants (and possibly even if they are) you will definitely need a more robust method for keeping them upright. I suggest going to your local farm supply store for fence posts. You do know what those are, right? Tomato plants are very large and not all that easy to support. If you don't know the difference between determinate and indeterminate tomatoes, I would google it now--no, really, right now! Things grow very quickly in TX. I would hate to see your children eaten by the tomato plants!
Ah, that's a story, Mary Margaret. I grew up in a time when Southern accents were considered by some educated people to be synonymous with ignorance. I learned this from television. At some point in my teenage years, I don't know when, I worked to speak in a more neutral voice. Pretty soon that became my accent. If I tried to speak with the same accent I was raised with, it would be fake. But whenever I'm around Southerners, or my family, I slide back into it without even noticing. Just this afternoon I visited with a friend from Alabama who has a lovely Southern accent. We got to talking about how much we missed the South, and before long I realized that my accent was slip-sliding right back to the old comfort zone. The weird thing is I have to be unconscious of it for it to work. If you asked me right now to speak in the accent of my family, I couldn't do it. But if you sat down with me and started talking about the South -- especially if bourbon was present -- it'd take about five minutes for me to get right back to where I started from. More or less.
Anyway, I don't know what determinate tomatoes are, but I'll figure it out. I grew up with tomato stakes (who on earth uses a fence post for tomatoes?!). Julie's following the tomato-growing instructions from "Square Foot Gardening." If that thick garden twine isn't sufficient, we'll know soon enough, and stake those babies.
I had a sneaking suspicion that that was the reason for the lack of Southern accent. Too bad, I love the accents of the South (and I have less than no patience with those who think that an accent denotes a level of intelligence or ignorance). Those of us who are Kansan enjoy the variation of accents around the country, as our own accents are rather boring.
OK, my neophyte gardener. Determinate tomato plants are the bush-type plants. They grow to a fixed height and require less support. They also tend to have a shorter time for actual tomato production, perhaps 4-6 weeks. The indeterminate types (more common here in Kansas) are sometimes called "vining" tomatoes. They continue to grow and produce until frost(although I have been told that tomatoes will not set, that is, the blooms will not actually produce fruit, while the temperature is above 100deg Fahrenheit) throughout the growing season. These plants require much more support, and are usually grown in cages. Fence posts are particularly good for keeping the cages upright, as you can sink them deep into the ground (use a driver--basically a piece of pipe, sealed at one end, with handles). You can also use them as stakes for your plants--they have the aforementioned advantage of being sunk deeply into the ground, plus they will not rot as wood stakes can. Check your tags (or little plastic spikes) that would have been with your plants when you purchased them. They will have a code that generally begins with I (indeterminate) or D (determinate) and then will have other letters that tell you the resistance of the tomato plant to various diseases and pests. Generally speaking, when you grow tomatoes for the first time, they are less likely to have issues with disease, but next year you could have more problems with them.
Oh, do let me know how the chard grows (and tastes). I have never grown that one, but it sounds good.
I love the readings of Confederacy Of Dunces but why is the comment section disabled? Please post more. I love that book.
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